


time is an illusion casting shadows inside cracked mirrors

by Tobi_Black



Series: illusions cast upon the Space-Between-Doors [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pining, Uchiha Dramatics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 07:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17279942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobi_Black/pseuds/Tobi_Black
Summary: It was a moment meant to go down in history, the sudden death of the Nidaime in the Second Shinobi War. What was remembered were details of how and who and when, not the ripples it caused.But there were some details that were never told.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> #The Author is a major fan of Alternate Universe – Canon, and twisting details of how it could have happened but was not allowed to be because the story had already been writ and tragedy was the name of the game #essentially: F*ck Canon #I want a better story for Tobirama

It took two days, nine hours, thirty-seven minutes (forty-two seconds) for Team Tobirama (minus one vital name-sake member) to limp back to Konoha.

Thirty-one hours, twenty-five minutes of that was spent back-tracking and zig-zagging across the whole half of the continent between _that place_ in Lightning Country back into their home territory.

Nineteen of those fifty-seven hours were because they were all exhausted and injured, and edging toward half-dead the longer they refused to stop even when they had to take turns carrying each other – because _they couldn’t stop_.

Tobirama had sacrificed himself so they could get home.

Bought them the time to escape.

They couldn’t stop because how could they _waste_ their beloved leader’s _sacrifice_.

Torifu cracked first; he began crying six hours, fourteen minutes in when he couldn’t sense Tobirama’s chakra anymore, not because they had gone beyond his mediocre sensing range, but because Tobirama’s chakra was so faint as to not register anymore.

Koharu held it together longest; her tears came twenty-three hours, forty-eight minutes in when they had doubled back within sensing range of where they’d left Tobirama and his chakra still couldn’t be found.

Kagami’s eyes had bled red nearly from the instant Tobirama had turned his back on them, and stayed that way for thirty-three hours, fifty-two minutes until he didn’t have a drop of chakra left to sustain the sharingan.

It took eight hours, one minute for the design to change.

Danzō began muttering to himself about military might and how no one would bring war to their beloved home again so no such _sacrifice_ was needed again thirty-three hours, seventeen minutes in.

Hiruzen spent nineteen hours, twenty-four minutes planning what he would say to Mito-hime, and to the village as a whole, about their loss.

Kagami punched Homura for suggesting putting Tobirama’s name on the fledgling Memorial Stone that had been created during the brief War in those first years of the village, forty-two hours, eleven minutes in. It didn’t even bruise, it was so weak, but his point got across.

Koharu near strangled a fellow Konoha shinobi out of reflex with her bare hands when they were greeted at the border fifty-one hours, thirteen minutes in.

They collapsed fifty-eight hours, twenty minutes after they had last seen Tobirama after debriefing about the clusterfuck of a mission.

Danzō woke three hours after the debrief, and had to be sedated when he saw white masks out of the corner of his eye and began drawing a seal in his blood that would blow everything within twenty feet up with himself.

Hiruzen woke five hours later after the debrief, cleaned himself up as best as he could, and went to talk to Mito-hime.

Koharu and Homura woke four hours and seven hours after the debrief respectively, and set to work spreading the news of Tobirama’s death through the village with the approximate time of a memorial to be held.

Torifu woke eight hours after the debrief and immediately set to work in his clan’s kitchens to prepare every dish he knew Tobirama had liked to be available at the memorial.

Kagami woke up two hours after the debrief and was quickly whisked away by his clan when his eyes had soon turned red again, and the change in design had been noted.

Danzō was allowed up twelve hours later, just in time to be at the memorial.

Kagami arrived at the end, as only Team Tobirama, Mito, her sons and granddaughter, and Tōka, were left.

His eyes no longer carried the new design but refused to return to black now that he had enough chakra to hold a half-activated sharingan.

It took seventy-two hours, fifty-three minutes for Team Tobirama to fall apart without its namesake.


	2. Chapter 2

The name _Tobirama_ became all but taboo around Konoha as Team Tobirama drifted around afloat (one hundred forty-one hours, twenty-seven minutes since they last saw Tobirama).

As Torifu had startled in the kitchen and nearly cut off his own hand with a knife he’d wielded since he had been old enough to walk when someone offered their condolences.

As Koharu had pinned three different shinobi to a wall with her senbon when they said it was waste that Tobirama hadn’t returned.

As Danzō had nearly gutted a Uchiha that had come around asking about Kagami and daring to insult both Kagami and Tobirama.

Mito was the exception to the rule as she bluntly asked them for assistance in helping her go through the thousand and one experiments her brother-in-law had started and now wouldn’t finish, and the hundreds of ideas began and now would be left incomplete, to find the list of jutsu Tobirama had deemed too dangerous for use by others – as well as anything else that needed to be cordoned off before anyone else got their hands on it.

It was Danzō who thus found something in one of the experiments that he couldn’t leave alone.

He spent fifteen hours, three minutes debating whether this should be something that was ‘lost’ to never see the light of day again – or if something should be done with it.

The decision was taken out of his hands when Kagami appeared of damn-near nowhere while wearing his white mask with the design of a rabbit, and saw what he had found.

His eyes were bright, but not red, as he looked at Danzō while clutching the large pile of notes written in Tobirama’s hand, something heartbroken in his gaze at the confirmation they’d found of Tobirama’s want to be father.

The notes had referenced the reason why he’d never been hounded by his elders to marry – that he’d fostered the belief he _couldn’t_ have children so that he wouldn’t have his own children sent into battle to die before they reached double digits if his brother’s dreams of peace never came true. That he’d held little taste for the act, and lack of partners had ensured it wouldn’t have been revealed regardless, but Tobirama had _wanted_ children of his own.

And he’d been experimenting a way to have a child without a woman in case it _hadn’t_ been a lie.

He’d set everything up, had gotten everything ready, even created an artificial egg with his DNA from the repurposing of one of his brother’s few non-mokouton original jutsu, with the intent of following through once the war had concluded.

Which it just had – but Tobirama hadn’t come back to finish.

The notes would allow for people to have children that wouldn’t ordinarily be able to, and they knew Tobirama would have wanted people to have this even if he couldn’t.

But they didn’t know if they could continue Tobirama’s experiment – particularly as there still remained the choice of who the ‘father’ would be. They were aware that Tobirama could have had this child with only his DNA, and fall somewhere between a clone and his child, but the fact that Tobirama hadn’t made note of that, suggested he’d intended on having a separate ‘father’.

Nine hours, forty-three minutes the two of them went back and forth about whether they _should_.

Koharu interrupted them after the second time they’d nearly come to blows over the reality that without Tobirama, none of them had the clout to make sure the child wouldn’t suffer a similar fate in childhood as the man himself. Mito could care for the child in the ways they couldn’t, but she had been in discussions with Tobirama that once this War was over, now that her children were grown, she wished to return to Uzugakure for a time to grieve amongst blood-kin and see her sister’s children and their children in person. They hadn’t wanted to force this on her, but she had been their best option according to Danzō of which Kagami had been verbally fighting tooth-and-nail to not force Mito into something she may not want but wouldn’t refuse for Tobirama.

She clobbered them both on the head to shut them up, demanded to know what they were arguing about, and once she found out about the possibility Tobirama could be a father, immediately but in and agreed they should make this dream come true for their sensei.

She then suggested that Mito was not necessary if all six of them shared guardianship, in the ultimate example of village bonds superseding clan bonds by not making the child any _one_ clan’s responsibility but truly having a village raise them.

Torifu agreed in a heartbeat once they told him.

Homura agreed as well, but took the time to raise some fundamental questions of how they would actually enact Koharu’s idea.

Things like where would they live, if they all lived together.

Things like the child would need supervising, and one of them would have to always be with them.

Things like needing to see Tobirama’s medical history, because he’d been albino and a natural sensor and how likely were both of those things to pass on was important to know.

Even as they squabbled over that – agreeing that they would get a place outside their clan compounds, an equal distance apart from any of them, and that they would rotate who was off-active duty, fairly quickly if not about how much Mito should be or would be involved – Team Tobirama came back together twenty-five hours, thirteen minutes after they fell apart a little bit like a once-broken freshly-repaired porcelain tea cup.


	3. Chapter 3

Mito had been quiet as they told her what they planned, listening until they had laid out everything eleven hours, thirty-six minutes of discussion had hammered out.

She looked at each of them with old, warring eyes that had seen so much death after outliving her husband and now her brother-in-law, and one son gravely wounded from a mission he’d taken hours after the memorial.

She hadn’t refused to consider the idea out of hand.

She asked for some time to make sure any such child would be received as a miracle.

Then she’d asked how they were planning on bringing any such child into the world without a mother and who the father would be.

Mito had then sat just sipping her tea as they fell into squabbles about where Koharu could carry a fertilized egg, or if they could try out the method Tobirama had planned to use and have one of them use the repurposed jutsu to change into a woman and carry the baby for nine months.

A single spike of killing intent from the woman had them quieting before she’d asked Koharu directly if she wanted to.

Koharu had hesitated for a moment, then agreed.

Mito had then turned to the boys and asked if anyone _wouldn’t_ father Tobirama’s child.

There had been a beat of silence, a minute of quiet, before Torifu had confessed he would rather be an uncle.

Hiruzen had blurted that Biwako had agreed to marry him before their last mission, and he didn’t think she wanted kids just yet.

Danzō had just stared at Hiruzen for a long seven minutes until Homura had stated he wanted to be an uncle.

Kagami didn’t say anything.

Mito had turned her attention to the two who hadn’t stated they _didn’t_ want to be a father, and Danzō had looked down then quietly revealed he couldn’t have kids. That a childhood illness had sterilized him, and being an uncle was all he ever wanted to be anyway.

Thus, it was how Kagami was decided in two hours, five minutes in Mito’s company that he would be the father.


	4. Chapter 4

It took a week, three days, sixteen hours, twenty-two minutes for them to not just convince their various heads of moving out of their compounds and into the village proper, but get a place with Mito’s assistance then move in as Mito cleared Koharu as being healthy enough to carry the child.

Danzō had to be talked down four times from making their house into a fortress, bobby-trapped and rigged with so many explosives he could take out half the village if set off.

Homura claimed one of the largest rooms as a library, and moved in not just his large collection, then Danzō’s very specific line of reading material, Koharu’s decent selection with Kagami’s mixed in because he didn’t own up to his favorite romances, before Mito brought over Tobirama’s.

Each of them moved their things in a couple of hours, putting weapons and clothes and various knick-knacks in fitting places – and not so fitting places because Torifu took over the kitchen and refused to let anyone else do anything with it until he’d gotten it set up to his specifications and that meant more of his things ended up there then in his room.

Mito didn’t just bring over Tobirama’s books, but essentially everything he’d managed to fill a small house with.

Which had turned out be more than they’d expected, considering Tobirama had always managed to be minimalist in his office, and his lab was too cluttered with his thousands of research notes to tell what wasn’t actually a necessary piece of equipment for his experiments.

She’d explained some of the various odds and ends.

Like the pressed flower collection that he’d made because one of his little brothers had loved flowers before he’d died young.

Like the various cat statues making fierce faces because another of his little brothers had thought them lucky before he’d died young.

Like the bonsai that looked half-dead but persisted on living regardless, that Hashirama had given him as a teenager and that he’d complained about but had dutifully taken care of for two decades.

They’d been quiet as they listened, realizing that even seven years of being closer than all but Mito and Tōka were to him, they’d still known very little other than broad strokes about his life before Konoha.


	5. Chapter 5

It was just after the egg had been fertilized, and during one of the days all of them couldn’t help but watch the little thing grow despite it being literally just a bundle of cells, that they’d all jerked upright.

They’d shared wide-eyed looks, hardly believing what was on the edge of their senses, but needing to know if the others felt it too.

They’d bolted to the village gates, where Mito already waited, hands pressed firmly to seals on her arms with chakra dancing on her fingertips just in case they were wrong.

In a sprawling blur, a scraggly man in a torn traveling kimono slammed into a wall that proudly bore a Hiraishin.

He stumbled back, shook the long dirty white hair from in front of his red eyes, then looked at them with the thinnest hint of a tired smile peeking out through his beard.

Then he’d collapsed, and they’d gotten a good look at the burn spanning across his entire back.

(It had been nineteen days, seventeen hours, and forty-three minutes since they’d last seen this man, since they had thought he’d _died_.)

He hadn’t passed out despite laying on the ground in a half-dignified heap, squinting slightly in the direction of their home where they’d left the fertilized egg, then he’d eyed them, “I’m gone not quite three weeks and I come home to find out I’m going to have a child?”

They’d rushed him, crying and sobbing and clinging as Mito, being the sensible one, made sure medical help was ready to deal with his wounds.


End file.
